New Delhi, April 19 -- Initiated six years ago, the GenomeIndia project has already thrown up results that will reshape how Indian society looks at itself and addresses its deepest public policy challenges. I will confine this column to just one aspect: health.

After sequencing the whole genomes of 10,000 Indians and analysing 20,000 blood samples of individuals from over 80 communities, the research team-comprising scientists from 20 institutes across the country-has provided us with a dramatically different basis on which to think about how India manages public health.

Two preprints published by GenomeIndia researchers this year confirm that Indians are both genotypically and phenotypically hyper-diverse and the two track each other. ...